Plan the Business Continuity Service (BCS) backup schedule

Consider the best balance of timely data versus failover availability when planning your daily BCS backup schedule. BCS performs a system backup on the primary Wave and transfers the data to the secondary Wave at the times of the day that you specify. You can schedule as many backup events as needed each day, however be aware that the secondary Wave will go out of service for a time while restoring the data for each scheduled event, so there will be no redundancy until the restore is complete.

Avoid overlapping scheduled backups with other scheduled maintenance. Wave also runs a number of other daily scheduled tasks. These can be viewed from the Wave desktop by looking at scheduled tasks.

Have an accurate estimate how long a system backup will take to complete. The System Backup process includes backing up voice mail messages and music on hold files, which can be numerous and large. Depending on the amount of system message activity, the configured mailbox sizes of users, and the retention period for Call Log entries, the backup process can take an appreciable amount of time. Consider this when schedule BCS backup/restore activity so that backups and restores do not overlap due to the length of time they take.

To avoid this issue, run a test backup/restore and log the amount of time that it takes. Use this information to plan the regular schedule.

You may need to revise your estimate over time. The load on the Wave may grow as business needs increase. Increased logs, recordings, and usage can also affect the average backup/restore time.

Backup/restore activities take up system resources. On very large or busy systems, the backup/restore process can slow system responsiveness during peak activity. Take this into consideration when planning the schedule of backups.